Famous Person No. 8
And here we have the reason we and probably half the crowd around us came to Talladega this year. That guy on the left accepting a plaque from the president of Talladega Superspeedway while standing with the governor's arm around his back? That's Dale Earnhardt, Jr., affectionately known by the entire NASCAR world as Junior.
Junior, born in 1974, is the third child of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and is the second of Earnhardt's children to climb into a race car. But Junior's older brother, Kerry, never had much success, and though Kerry's son, Jeffrey, is also running at NASCAR's highest level at the moment, he usually comes in last. So it's been up to Junior to carry on the Earnhardt name. Junior grew up around race cars, and he started driving as soon as he was old enough to reach the pedals. He had a lot of success at the sport's lower levels, and by the year 2000, he was good enough to make the big time, driving the DEI No. 8.
Just so you know, DEI stood for "Dale Earnhardt, Inc.," and the two-car company was owned in part by Dale Earnhardt, Sr. (Though the man himself actually drove for somebody else, which is exactly the kind of deal that makes NASCAR different from other sports. Other sports would call that sketchy.) As I've said, NASCAR has long been a business built on nepotism, but you still have to be able to drive the car. Junior proved himself only 12 races into his career when he won at Texas, breaking a record for the quickest win by a rookie in the modern era previously held by his dad. Junior went on to win another 25 races over the course of his career, which doesn't sound like much, but one of these races is really hard to win. He ranks seventh on the all-time win list among active drivers, and he's 29th on that list for every Cup driver since the start of the sport.
The defining moment of Junior's career--and, probably, his life--came at the end of the 2001 Daytona 500. In the last lap coming around Turn 4, Junior was running second. His friend and DEI teammate, Michael Waltrip (who had never won a race) was in first. Dale Sr. was running third, doing what he always did, blocking traffic and protecting Michael and Junior's lead from cars that might try a last turn pass. Something went wrong, and Dale Sr. got turned into the wall in a crash that actually looks pretty tame when you watch it. But the impact snapped Earnhardt's neck, killing him instantly. From that moment on, the weight of the Earnhardt name fell on Junior's shoulders, as millions of fans demanded that Junior suddenly become the man his father had been.
And Junior rose to the challenge pretty well for a while, generally outperforming what would have been expected of any normal driver. He was especially good at the restrictor plate tracks, the big superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega where the cars run their fastest in really big packs. He won four Talladega races in a row in 2002 and 2003. But expectations were different for Junior, who was somehow supposed to channel his father's skill from the grave. He was less dominant away from the superspeedways, and his situation was made worse by the background drama of DEI, which was being run into the ground by his father's widow. (There's a whole big thing there.)
Junior finally got away from all that in 2008, when he jumped over to the four-car empire of Hendrick Motorsports (which also ran superstars Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson) and multiplied his car number by 11 to drive the 88. That's been his car ever since.
Famous Person No. 8
And here we have the reason we and probably half the crowd around us came to Talladega this year. That guy on the left accepting a plaque from the president of Talladega Superspeedway while standing with the governor's arm around his back? That's Dale Earnhardt, Jr., affectionately known by the entire NASCAR world as Junior.
Junior, born in 1974, is the third child of NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and is the second of Earnhardt's children to climb into a race car. But Junior's older brother, Kerry, never had much success, and though Kerry's son, Jeffrey, is also running at NASCAR's highest level at the moment, he usually comes in last. So it's been up to Junior to carry on the Earnhardt name. Junior grew up around race cars, and he started driving as soon as he was old enough to reach the pedals. He had a lot of success at the sport's lower levels, and by the year 2000, he was good enough to make the big time, driving the DEI No. 8.
Just so you know, DEI stood for "Dale Earnhardt, Inc.," and the two-car company was owned in part by Dale Earnhardt, Sr. (Though the man himself actually drove for somebody else, which is exactly the kind of deal that makes NASCAR different from other sports. Other sports would call that sketchy.) As I've said, NASCAR has long been a business built on nepotism, but you still have to be able to drive the car. Junior proved himself only 12 races into his career when he won at Texas, breaking a record for the quickest win by a rookie in the modern era previously held by his dad. Junior went on to win another 25 races over the course of his career, which doesn't sound like much, but one of these races is really hard to win. He ranks seventh on the all-time win list among active drivers, and he's 29th on that list for every Cup driver since the start of the sport.
The defining moment of Junior's career--and, probably, his life--came at the end of the 2001 Daytona 500. In the last lap coming around Turn 4, Junior was running second. His friend and DEI teammate, Michael Waltrip (who had never won a race) was in first. Dale Sr. was running third, doing what he always did, blocking traffic and protecting Michael and Junior's lead from cars that might try a last turn pass. Something went wrong, and Dale Sr. got turned into the wall in a crash that actually looks pretty tame when you watch it. But the impact snapped Earnhardt's neck, killing him instantly. From that moment on, the weight of the Earnhardt name fell on Junior's shoulders, as millions of fans demanded that Junior suddenly become the man his father had been.
And Junior rose to the challenge pretty well for a while, generally outperforming what would have been expected of any normal driver. He was especially good at the restrictor plate tracks, the big superspeedways like Daytona and Talladega where the cars run their fastest in really big packs. He won four Talladega races in a row in 2002 and 2003. But expectations were different for Junior, who was somehow supposed to channel his father's skill from the grave. He was less dominant away from the superspeedways, and his situation was made worse by the background drama of DEI, which was being run into the ground by his father's widow. (There's a whole big thing there.)
Junior finally got away from all that in 2008, when he jumped over to the four-car empire of Hendrick Motorsports (which also ran superstars Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson) and multiplied his car number by 11 to drive the 88. That's been his car ever since.